{"id":1819,"slug":"joy-townsite-joy-utah","story":[{"heading":null,"paragraphs":["Joy was a product of Utah's hard-rock era — a mining camp founded in the 1870s in Juab County, in the orbit of the Tintic boom, sustained by the standard western mix of gold, silver and copper. The district it answered to eventually produced some of the heaviest yields in Utah mining history. Joy itself stayed a camp: a townsite, workings, and a population of men who intended to get rich nearby."]},{"heading":"What the ground keeps","paragraphs":["What it did not have was duration. The ore gave out or the money did — the record is thin on which came first — and the settlement emptied in the manner of hundreds like it, absorbed back into the west-desert scrub it was cut from. What remains on Bureau of Land Management ground is the residue the file actually keeps: foundations, scattered equipment, the outline of a place that never quite became a town.","County maps still carry the name, and the site is managed as open recreation ground — visitors find the foundations on their own terms, which for a camp like Joy is the whole remaining exhibit."]},{"heading":null,"paragraphs":["The name outlasted the buildings, which is the standard ending for a camp like this. Joy is documented ground — a real townsite with a real founding decade — filed where the archive keeps the places that history emptied rather than filled."]}],"name":"Joy Townsite","aliases":[],"type":"GHOST_TOWN","type_label":"Ghost Town","cats":["GHOST_TOWN"],"groups":["ghost-towns"],"desc":"Foundation and equipment remains of a mining settlement.","full_desc":"A ghost town in Joy, Utah, Joy Townsite is filed here for what the record attaches to it. Foundation and equipment remains of a mining settlement. It sits in the archive under ghost towns. The dossier holds 1 documented fact — a documented spine with no haunting reports attached. The site is open to visitors. Names, dates and reports are filed together here, so the record stays honest about which is which.","address":null,"city":"Joy","county":null,"state":"Utah","postal":null,"region":"West","lat":39.572766,"lon":-113.058564,"coord_kind":"EXACT","status":"HISTORIC_SITE","access":"PUBLIC","access_notes":null,"ownership":null,"website":null,"phone":null,"year_built":null,"year_opened":null,"year_closed":null,"year_demolished":null,"designation":null,"current_use":null,"research_notes":"Direct government enrichment. No paranormal inference from ghost-town status. Coordinates omitted where the page gives only an administrative office or distant visitor center.","stage":"SOURCE_RESEARCH","quality":{"level":"MEDIUM","score":77.1,"dims":{"location_confidence":0.75,"identity_confidence":0.65,"historical_confidence":0.8,"source_quality":1,"paranormal_claim_provenance":null,"coordinate_confidence":0.85,"current_access_confidence":0.7,"freshness":0.65}},"claims":[],"history":[{"description":"Founded in the 1870s, Joy supported gold, silver and copper mining. Joy Townsite's history is documented — boom, bust, and desertion all on record, the lore layered on top. This belongs to the verified spine of the entry, the layer everything else is measured against. The record appears in 'Joy Townsite'. The date is part of the site's documented spine.","evidence":"HISTORICALLY_VERIFIED","date_start":null,"date_end":null,"confidence":null,"source":{"name":"Joy Townsite","url":"https://www.recreation.gov/gateways/16431","publisher":"Recreation.gov / Bureau of Land Management","type":"GOVERNMENT","authority":1}}],"legends":[],"entities":[],"events":[],"investigations":[],"encounters":[],"media":[],"persons":[],"visitor":{"tour_availability":"Verify before visiting","notes":"Site is largely open-air; some buildings may be unsafe or on private land. Check local conditions before visiting.","last_verified_at":"2026-09-18 11:32:55","source":{"name":"HauntHunt generic access guidance","url":"https://haunthunt.com/about#access-guidance","publisher":"HauntHunt editorial","type":"DIRECTORY","authority":2}},"sources":[{"name":"Joy Townsite","url":"https://www.recreation.gov/gateways/16431","publisher":"Recreation.gov / Bureau of Land Management","type":"GOVERNMENT","authority":1}],"conflicts":[],"wiki":null,"counts":{"claims":0,"history":1,"legends":0,"entities":0,"sources":1}}